


And I Never Even Saw You Aim

by misura



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"You wanna teach me how to shoot?" Hicks asks. He's young and foolish and brazen and quite possibly almost as good with a gun as he fancies himself to be, and likely as not, these are the things that will get him killed before he ever lives to see the age Priest is now.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Never Even Saw You Aim

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _Priest & or / Hicks, Teaching Hicks the tricks of the trade._ (pooka_07)

"You wanna teach me how to shoot?" Hicks asks. He's young and foolish and brazen and quite possibly almost as good with a gun as he fancies himself to be, and likely as not, these are the things that will get him killed before he ever lives to see the age Priest is now.

Teaching him won't help. It will only speed things up, give him even more confidence.

Even so.

"How about you're the one to do the teaching?"

Even so, this is a new world, and a new war, and where they lack the support of the Clergy, for all that God may be on their side still, there can be no harm in learning something new.

Most especially not if he can teach Hicks a few things as well in the process.

 

"You're still a fool for a pretty face," Priestess tells him, looking fond and a little sad and always like the woman he could have, should have, would have loved, if only.

Just as well that there's Hicks now, really. "He's not that pretty."

"Hm."

 

It's not that Priest doesn't know how to shoot. Hicks isn't entirely clear on the why, and Priest takes a certain pleasure in not telling him the reason. The simple truth - the simplest truth, would be that he doesn't know himself.

Give a Priest a weapon, and he can put it to use to kill vampires. It's an article of faith.

"How 'bout humans?" Hicks asks, staring into a campfire that's a poor man's substitute for sunlight.

Priest's made do with less, in the Cities, with their eternal black clouds and artificial lighting. "Yes."

Hicks doesn't say anything, but Priest can read the thought off his face: _killing really_ does _come easy to you._

Priest shakes his head lightly, knowing the gesture will go unnoticed in the half-dark of the shadows.

 

The third time Priest casually slips a bit of vampire anatomy into their shooting lessons, Hicks calls him on it. Priest's half-surprised (and half-annoyed) it's taken him this long; slow men don't kill a lot of vampires, assuming they kill any at all.

"You wanna learn how to shoot or you wanna tell me about vampires?" Hicks asks, sounding like he thinks he already knows the answer and isn't best-pleased with it.

"Both," Priest says, even though technically, it's a lie. He has no particular desire or need for shooting lessons in general. He wants them from _Hicks_ , because teaching something to someone else can help you understand it better yourself - and because Priests aren't teachers.

Priests aren't _taught_ ; they're born. There's training, yes, and rituals none of them remembers (although the Clergy might, will, should, for all their sakes) but no classrooms. No lessons, other than those learned on the battlefield, in the frontline.

Hicks snorts. "Fine. If that's the way you wanna be."

Standing in the warm sand, with Hicks's hands on him, 'correcting his stance' (as if he's ever going to be firing a gun without being on the move), Priest is entirely too aware that this may, indeed, be the way he wants it to be.

It's been a long time since he's been touched; almost as long as it's been since he's learned the lesson that on the battlefield, in the frontline, there's only one vow you need to keep, in order to survive.

_Get them before they get us._

 

They're not on the battlefield now, of course, and he _has_ taken a vow of chastitity, even if Hicks hasn't.

They're in a war, but the frontlines are still being drawn, the enemy forces still moving under the cover of darkness, destination unknown.

 

In the dream, it's Hicks now - Hicks who falls, Hicks whom he lets go of. It makes sense enough, he supposes; the dead are gone, and only the living remain.

Priest wishes it could be that simple.

"Bad dream?" Hicks asks, like he's got a few of his own coming back to haunt him every now and then.

"I've had it before," Priest says. "Often." The implication being that it no longer bothers him.

Hicks nods, once, curtly. The implication being that he smells bullshit when he hears it, but that he's not too dumb to catch a clue when someone gives him one.

"Sorry."

"It's fine," Hicks says. "Everybody's got things they don't wanna talk about."

"Not everybody." Confession is good for the soul - supposedly. Most people in the Cities will talk about everything they do, everything they feel, everything they think, at least once, in one place, and to one person. It's not a real person, of course; you can't train someone to be able to go up against vampires and then make him unable to spot the little discrepancies, the tell-tale signs of a not-real person.

In an odd way, Priest still misses it, though. A chance to talk, however carefully worded.

"She said it helps when there's someone with you," Hicks says.

She. _Priestess._ He never slept poorly during the war, but then, he had less memories then. And someone with him, yes. Several someones, occasionally. "It does. Sometimes."

Hicks nods, not pressing the point for the moment.

They're both still awake at sunrise, alive and alone.

 

"Basics," Hicks says, their bodies close enough to almost touch. Priest is aware of him as a warm, solid presence - too aware, possibly. He could blindly jump into a room with ten vampires and Hicks, and know exactly whom to kill and when to stay his hand.

Of course, all things considered, it's unlikely all ten vampires would stay alive for very long when in one room with Hicks.

"You can fire a gun while standing still, you can fire a gun up in the air."

Balance is a delicate thing and the Clergy, if willfully blind, is hardly foolish. If they could have armed their Priests with firearms, doubtlessly they would have done so.

On the other hand, better to ask for a shooting lesson than to beg for something else. Something Hicks may not even be willing to give, for all his touching and companionable silences.

 

The dream. Again.

Waking up to find Hicks standing over him, and Priest considers pointing out that when someone has been trained to kill quickly and effectively and while moving at an inhuman speed, it might be wiser to keep your distance until you're sure they know you're there, and not an enemy.

Some lessons are hard to learn, clearly - and some may be unnecessary.

"You want some company?" Hick says, and his voice sounds hoarse and a bit nervous, but not nervous enough to turn him down, to treat it the way Priest treated Hicks's threats of shooting him, a mere few months ago.

"Yes."

No more bad dreams, that night - or any of the ones that follow.

(Plenty of time for that after the war.)

(Assuming he survives this one, too, of course.)


End file.
